Susan Sontag: Illness as Metaphor

In October of 1977, Susan Sontag delivered one of the institute’s five James Lectures for that year. Her topic was “Illness as Metaphor”. She explored the truth that it was no longer possible, as she wrote, “to take up one’s residence in the kingdom of the ill unprejudiced by the lurid metaphors with which it has been landscaped.” Though she did not directly reference it, she herself was being treated for breast cancer at the time. The lecture was published in 1978, first as three essays in the New York Review of Books, and then as a book. It went on to become one of Sontag’s best-known pieces of writing.

[violight]

algum brasileiro que também veio via rita von hunty do tempero drag?

[macatbongblues]

To say that Susan Sontag was a genius is a sick understatement.

[ericbray]

I wish we still had her insight into our current pandemic.

[bloodstone]

Bless Ancestor Susan Sontag 🧎🏿 She gets me every time ❣️🙏🏿

[liviakoeche]

thank you so much for posting this lecture, it's precious

[AnnaMorris]

After helping my dear husband survive nine months of cancer I lay beside him as he succeeded to die well. He was convinced that there was a certain way to do it the right way. I was convinced that one had to already be a phenomenally honorable and passionate kind of person to be touched by such a disease. I believe we were both correct. Cancer is a bitch! But she knows how to win over a perfectly good man.

[brianscates]

It's a very brilliant book that is especially relevant if you have an interest in the Victorian concept of consumption or TB - especially applicable to consumptive women of that timespan - think male concepts of the suffering involved and its near-denial of the fact that consumptives died totally grossly ill in body and often in mind; the romantic concept of consumption is often based on female saintly suffering (involving women's and some males and children too) and males and some females took pleasure in masochistic-sadistic suffering and such pleasures as they extracted could be used as a fetish to deny the brutal horrors of dying of consumptive illnesses; and a fetish is always sexual.

[canalprofa.alinereginabrit]

eu vim depois de ouvir rita tb!!! fantastic!

[sattarabus]

Volatile, quick-witted, incisive and sometimes abrasive, Susan Sontag was a critic and theorist of remarkable erudition and insight. Arm chair bluestockings should bow in obeisance to imbibe the values that informed the armature of Susan's head and heart.

[havefunbesafe]

I’ve often envisioned Weird Al singing the book title as a spoof of the J Geil song, Girlfriend is a Centerfold.

[konnerdent]

For the fact that I got here following a John Green rabbit hole, I am somewhat ashamed. Nevertheless, I’m glad I arrived here.

[drau]

Just got here from JRE. Super random but I’m here

[telebob]

Why does Sontag get credit for telling long obvious truths as revelations? I heard nothing did not already know except how impressed Sontag is with herself.